


to be together (to find each other)

by cwalsh



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, au where everything is the same except kageyama and hinata are gods of the sky, based on filipino mythology, for Haikyuu Filo Week, is it platonic? is it romantic? i don't know either?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28191609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cwalsh/pseuds/cwalsh
Summary: The story of theamihanandhabagat, in the eyes of one Sugawara Koushi.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: HQ Filo Week Fic Collection





	to be together (to find each other)

It’s September when first-year Sugawara Koushi decides to play outdoor volleyball. 

To be fair, it technically still is outdoor volleyball despite the hard floor. They’re in some kind of basketball-court-turned-multipurpose-hall that might have had a roof at one point (it definitely didn’t have one now) but Sugawara doesn’t mind. He would play volleyball anywhere, at this point. 

The Karasuno Men’s Volleyball Club were invited to a junior training camp in the Philippines, but that meant that they only had access to the air-conditioned indoor gym during their team schedules. No individual training for them, despite the first-years’ insistence. Despite playing together after just a few months of training, they were determined to learn as much as they can before their seniors graduate; Asahi was so close to perfecting their strongest attack, and Sugawara was getting antsy, itching to toss more volleyballs for him. 

When Ukai heard them talking in their shared room, he suggested they go out on their own. Thankfully their host family (an old friend of Ukai’s whose retirement home was big enough to house fifteen Japanese volleyball players?) insisted on letting them play at the open court in their spare time. Daichi and Asahi perked up at the thought of more volleyball, and in that moment, Sugawara knew what they would be doing that day. It was almost too easy to convince them to join him in training together.

Bribing Asahi with tosses was easy, and it didn’t take a lot of convincing for Daichi to join – as much as they wanted to see the sights like the rest of their teammates, they came to the Philippines to play more volleyball. It wasn’t as hot as the past few days, thankfully, and though the clouds are rolling in, the slight reprieve from the heat made it easier for Sugawara to play with the kids he made friends with. 

While the rest of the team are out buying souvenirs to bring back home, Sugawara came to the Philippines to train, and that’s what they did: even though it’s some neighborhood version of it against ten-year old kids who can barely understand their broken English. Their host family said that the court was usually used for basketball matches, but this corner of the city is apparently home to a good regional team and are very into volleyball games. 

It still doesn’t explain the DIY volleyball net made of rusted metal stands, and a ragged looking volleyball net. Sugawara thinks I can work with this. 

  


He tosses the ball to a kid doing a run-up in green and blue flip-flops, and they cheer when it goes over the net despite his low jump. Sugawara teaches the kid how to do overhand passes when half an hour later, it starts to rain. 

“Should we make a run for it?” Asahi sidles up beside him as he said this, sitting down on a wooden bench on Sugawara’s left. The first-years are huddled by the nearest sari-sari store, under a makeshift roof made of metal. Sugawara remembers taking cover a few minutes before, the wind knocking him off-balance, and thinks we can’t walk out in this weather.

Kiko - the kid in mismatching flip flops - plays tag with his friends under the rain. Sugawara feels terrified for them. 

“I really don’t think we should walk out in this rain,” Daichi says from Sugawara’s right. Clearly, Daichi’s thinking about the same thing; they have three days left until they fly back, and can’t risk losing hours of training from a cold. The bottom of Daichi’s pants are wet beside his own, and Sugawara is starting to get cold. They sit still, listening to the rain beat down on the flimsy roof above their heads and to the wind whistling. 

Sugawara watches the trees sway with fascination and horror. 

Kiko, with his hair and clothes soaking wet, sits across from them while wiping his face with the inside of his elbow. He smiles at Sugawara and says something in Tagalog, then gestures to an empty Coca-Cola bottle on the floor and mimes drinking from a glass. The three friends smile in relief. 

After they get their drinks, Daichi asks “Does it always rain this much here?” in English, because he is the only one of them who pays attention in class. Sugawara sips on the plastic straw and tries not to drop the plastic bag of orange soda. 

Kiko shrugs. He says something else in Tagalog and Daichi quickly opens a translator app, Asahi leaning in across him to peer at Daichi’s phone screen. Sugawara lets him, leaning back to sip at his drink.

Asahi makes a curious sound and says, “He means the weather, right? The skies?” Daichi only hums. Sugawara leans in too, and reads the words on the screen.

Sugawara looks up at Kiko, and points to the sky. Repeats the word in English. Kiko nods. 

_Hindi mapakali_. Restless.

  


  


  


_Excerpt from Journal for Southeast Asian Folklore by E.B. Santos:_

> In the Islands of the Philippine Archipelago, there is a period where the wind will switch between patterns several times before settling into the pattern for the new season to come. Now it may seem trivial, but to Philippine’s ancestors, it meant so much more. 
> 
> There are accounts from the first warriors, called the female _babaylan_ in the Philippines, seeing glimpses of visions that came with the changing seasons, especially the transition to the dry season. Possibly referring to the northeast monsoon _Amihan_ , this cold season was gentle, compared to its counterpart. After the heavy rains that came with the strong winds of the southwest (the _Habagat,_ which destroyed rice paddies and blew away their homes), the calm was a gift from the heavens to pre-colonial Filipinos. 
> 
> When they started worshipping this change, the _babaylan_ started seeing visions and preached about him: a being with dark hair, and long fingers held out in front of them as if in a trance. The warriors thanked the wind for its kindness, for the safety of the cold and for the quiet whispers of breeze from the northeast. They wrote songs about the cold ( _“His is a gentle wind, but we know the cold was never forgiving”_ ), and learned to make do. They built coats around themselves. Made fires. 
> 
> It’s better than drowning, I assume. 
> 
> And so the warriors gave him names in thanks. They gave him crow-like wings.
> 
> Until much later, the visions changed. 
> 
> Stories of a boy as bright as the color of the sun. These two beings together, dancing to an unfinished song. Running together. 
> 
> The most notable work dedicated to these accounts is a pre-colonial Ilocano epic _“Himpapawid”_ , where a blue-eyed boy meets his partner in a duel against each other, and become gods of the skies together. 

  


  


  


It’s the changing of the seasons. 

Theirs is a dance centuries old, and the skies never forget. The Sky lets them play together long enough that they are nearly touching, and their winds are strong enough to touch the ground. 

There’s something right, here: they take turns in the moments in between the Changing, painting the skies with blue and gold streaks. The creatures on the ground look upward, hearts beating faster at the beautiful disaster they make. Their winds blow their homes and fields away, and as the humans start to run uphill, and the heavy rains bear down on the ground like weights. 

How does it feel being limited to the confines of simple flesh and bone?

  


(–the two are quiet in their place in the Sky, dark blue eyes boring into terrified brown. 

We can’t do this anymore, one of them says. We shouldn’t–) 

  


  


They can hear someone screaming for help, drowning. 

  


  


  


Years later Sugawara finds himself in Tokyo on another training camp when Yamaguchi asks Sugawara about their trip to the Philippines. The rest of the Karasuno Men’s Volleyball Club (barring Daichi who was out on an evening run and Nishinoya, who was passed out on his own futon) was sitting in an unorganized semi-circle in front of Sugawara, listening in rapt attention. 

Sugawara, in his eagerness, ended up talking for a good half an hour, all volleyball talk exhausted as he told them about the neighborhood kids he met there. 

“It was raining so hard, they called it the _Habagat_ ,” Sugawara says, cozy in his pajamas on someone’s futon nearest to the window. He says the word awkwardly, unsure of the term from two years before. “I didn’t understand a word the kid was saying, but our host family said he was talking about wind patterns.”

“What does it mean?” 

Sugawara shrugs. “I don’t know. But it did rain almost the entire time we were there.”

Asahi sits up from beside him. He was lounging on the futon beside him, letting Sugawara do the talking. “Oh, I remember him! He kept saying things about the wind getting restless.” he says, raising his hand to add confused air quotes, his brow furrowed.

“So they have their own gods, too?” Yamaguchi says from his futon across from him, sitting up in revelation, too. Sitting by the wall was the only other first-year, Tsukishima, who had headphones on. Sugawara thinks he’s listening in anyway.

Sugawara looks back at Asahi, who shrugs at them. “Maybe? It rains a lot here, too, but we don’t have stories for them, right?” Asahi says, hugging his knees and looking small despite his large stature. He keeps forgetting they’re both getting older.

Helpless, Sugawara shrugs too, in reply. “Maybe we do, but the kid seemed like he was used to the rain.”

“That’s because he probably was. Used to it, I mean.” Ennoshita points out, laying out his own futon across the room. 

“We were in the middle of it in a foreign country. The weather still makes me nervous, but that kid was used to it. I’ve seen storms in Japan, and I should’ve been used to it but…”

“But that wind was terrifying.” A deep voice from across the room scares Sugawara a little, until he sees the tuft of hair above everyone else’s that is Daichi. He has a look in his eyes Sugawara recognizes. The same expression he feels on his own face. 

Sugawara nods somberly. “It was terrifying.” 

Daichi clears his throat, closing the door with a soft click. 

  


“We were in the hands of a monster, and we didn’t know it yet.” 

  


  


  


  


_Excerpt from The Philippine Reporter, article by Ann Olaila:_

> Multiple deaths have been reported from the monsoon rains, now a total of 29 from last week’s 10, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said.
> 
> The rains also left 12 others missing while wounded persons increased to a total of 35 when a landslide occurred in Abra.
> 
> A total of 301,099 people are affected in Cordillera Administrative Region, Calabarzon, and National Capital Region. Almost 20,000 are moved to evacuation centers, and multiple roads are closed off as a result.
> 
> Where the habagat was previously known as nurturing, this episodic weather pattern has affected thousands of families across the country. 
> 
> “Many dismiss the monsoon rains as ‘habagat lang’,” PAGASA Administrator Dr. Marcos said in an interview with the Reporter. “But as the rains continued, people began to fear it.”
> 
> The Office of the Vice President has dispatched teams to conduct relief operations for affected families in areas flooded by the Habagat. 

  


  


  


The team spends their last meeting listening to Takeda-sensei thank them for their work, for working hard in the Nationals, and Coach Ukai congratulates them for playing at Nationals. Sugawara speaks, too. He tries not to cry, and looks at their new setter in the eye when he tells him to do his best. Asahi can barely say a word, but he manages a few words enough to make Nishinoya tear up a little and hug him tightly. When Daichi shakes Ennoshita’s hand and thanks the rest of them for being the best volleyball team he could ever ask for, Sugawara can barely hold back his tears. 

It’s their last meeting of the year, and they don’t talk about what happens tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, when the Karasuno seniors graduate. 

It’s cold, but it’s fitting, Sugawara thinks. He wants time to stop, wants the cold to root him to this spot. He wants the frostbite to freeze him cold to the tips of his fingers so that when he wakes up, they could play more volleyball. 

They built a team here. Sugawara sighs through the lump in his throat, watching his friends close the doors to the court with a hand on his gym bag. Asahi stands beside Daichi, fidgeting as their captain locks the gym doors with finality. 

The three of them don’t say anything, and Sugawara forces himself to turn away. 

His friends step up beside him. They don’t look back.

  


Asahi clears his throat after a few moments, the silence deafening. “So that’s it, then?” 

Sugawara laughs, half out of relief that the tension broke, half out of disbelief. That’s it. “That’s it, Asahi. It was fun while it lasted.”

“I can still remember learning how to spike your tosses, Suga.”

Sugawara hits him with an elbow to the side. “My tosses are always great. It took you a while to perfect your form, Karasuno’s Ace.”

Asahi throws his head back when he laughs. “We got to Nationals eventually, didn’t we?”

Sugawara only smiles. “We did.” They find themselves walking to Sakanoshita Store purely out of habit, and stop by the vending machines. Sugawara watches their coach tend to a grandma from the window, and he feels like he’s starting the year all over again. 

“It felt like a lifetime,” Daichi says, wrapped his coat tighter around himself. Sugawara raises an eyebrow as he looks at his captain – his friend, who only shrugs. 

  


“Like we could play forever.”

  


  


  


(The one in gold sighs from afar. They say that gods and men share the same breath, but there is nothing human about the way his sigh blows against the waters below.

 _I would play with them_ , he says, resting his feet and waiting for his turn. His golden storms are still, and he only watches the cold streaks of blue breeze through their trees. There is a moment of hesitation in his throat, and later, resolve in his bright brown eyes. _Would you join me?_

  


His friend only raises his hand in reply, and the creatures on the ground huddle for warmth. Slender hands are gentle with them, and he waits until the skies are still again when he speaks. 

_The earth is no place for beings like us._ His sigh is cold, and the resulting waves of water beat down against the seawall. _They wouldn’t understand._

_That’s not what I asked._

His gold skin can’t feel the cold, not with his hot winds, but his friend’s gaze pierces through him like a chill. Blue eyes are pensive, thoughtful when he looks back at him. 

_You know I would._

  


A bell rings, somewhere.)

  


**Author's Note:**

> I loved exploring Philippine mythology, especially this version on the gods of the sky. In the stories, the amihan and habagat are children of Bathala, and they were too rough and playful that they destroyed the land when they were together. The southwest (Habagat) was too strong and careless, and the northeast (Amihan) was cold and dry. I loved seeing kagehina in the weather, and I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> I saw this in my research, too: "In some years there is a period of perhaps a week or two where the wind will switch between amihan and habagat patterns several times before settling into the pattern for the new season to come." And I think that's beautiful. 
> 
> Feel free to talk to me about volleyball boys! I'm @notaizawa on Twitter.


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